Good news yesterday at his brace check up. We can go to nights and nap times. This equals happy play time for baby and Mommy!

I love this visualization of him in 4 years completely brace free with perfect feet and ankles zooming around. This is the future!

Yay baby Drake!

(side note pictures are actually from a few weeks ago)

I forgot to give a shout out to Drake’s amazing nurses on Saturday. Everyone at Good Sam was wonderful, but I especially loved Nurse Stephanie, who worked a ton of night shifts and made scrapbook pages and gave him his first bath, and Nurse Conni, who worked a lot of his day and weekend shifts, gave me a TON of support and gave Drake his first full bottle! Thank you and God bless you from the bottom of our hearts!

We took Drake to his first birthday party. It was his great grandmother’s 75th birthday. I didn’t want to, but I also didn’t want us to miss it. I wore him in a carrier, warned people off, stayed away from the middle of the crowd as much as possible, and was extremely relieved it was outside at a park.

It was a gorgeous day. He loved being outside and looking around at all the people. I was a bundle of anxiety the WHOLE time, and I think I’m going to continue to be for the next two weeks until we know that he’s not going to get sick from it.

Yay. Yay. Yay. We finally have our date for Drake’s inguinal hernia repair. By the time we have it done in October, it’ll have been almost 5 months from the time I noticed it and took him to see his pediatrician in a panic. I’m so, so glad that his ENT was able to coordinate with the surgeon and will be able to do his mouth injection without an extra bout with general anesthesia. Please God, just keep that little bit of intestine from kinking up for a few more weeks!

On September 7, 2011, I saw my baby’s heartbeat for the first time. I cried. It was at the end of 32 of the scariest hours of my life up to that point. On September 6th, I started having some heavy pink and brown spotting. After a sleepless night, I called my Gynecologist/OB’s office. My first appointment wasn’t scheduled to happen until the 15th. The nurse instructed me to head straight to the hospital and have blood drawn.

I got a call about 230pm that my hcg levels definitely showed I was pregnant, but they were concerned about my progesterone level. It was a 9.7 which is on the very low end of normal. They set up an ultrasound for 30 minutes, and I left home to go pick up my husband from work along the way.

We only had to sit in the waiting room for about 10 minutes, and I remember feeling like I was going to throw up the ENTIRE time. Not due to morning sickness either. I only had 1 or 2 incidences of throwing up usually I only had mild nausea.

148 bpm and two pictures of a little bean. I was discovered to be 6 weeks, 5 days along. Estimated due date of 4/27/12.

Ironically, his heartbeat was 148 at the final ultrasound of my pregnancy, too. Taken on February 9, 2012. Eleven days before his birth.

The spotting lasted for 5 weeks. Almost until I was out of that scary first trimester. A friend tried to convince me to push for progesterone supplements when I talked to her about things. She’d had her own pregnancy scares, woes, and triumphs. Of course, the doctor’s office turned me down since it was my first pregnancy on record.